‘Hello, stranger.’
‘Stranger nothing. It’s your day off, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘Come on, then. Time for us to go and get your wedding clothes,’ Chas said.
Tingles raced up Marie’s spine. The sky took on a more vivid blue, and the colours of the houses opposite were suddenly brighter. She took care not to smile too broadly.
‘What wedding clothes?’
‘Your wedding clothes. You’re going to marry me before my leave ends, and get the best, most faithful and devoted husband who ever lived.’ His wide hazel eyes searched hers. ‘What do you say?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘Come on, Marie, have a heart. I’m a reformed character. I mended my ways completely on the day we got engaged.’
‘I mean . . .’ she said, dragging out the suspense, ‘ . . . I can’t go with you to get wedding clothes. It would be bad luck for you to see them.’
He laughed, and relaxed. ‘I won’t have to see them. Just take plenty of clothes into the changing rooms, and I won’t know which you’ve chosen. They can put them in a bag for you. All I’ll have to do is hand the money over.’
‘All right, then,’ she said, and then heaved a heavy sigh. ‘Oh, Thornton-Varley’s! All the beautiful clothes they sold, everything of the best. Why did they have to go and get flattened?’
His shrugged. ‘Search me, but there must be somewhere still standing. What does it matter, anyway? I’d marry you with dirty feet, in your gardening gear.’
‘I wouldn’t, though,’ she said, and might have added that she would settle for nothing less than the sheerest nylons held up by the very laciest suspenders. She’d soon show him what stocking tops were all about, she thought, and her stomach was suddenly full of nervous flutterings.
‘You won’t have enough coupons to get a boatload of stuff. Clothes this morning, and married this afternoon,’ he said. ‘It’s all arranged. My parents and the people at Dunswell are going to be our witnesses.’
She ran upstairs to get her coupons, and left the bedroom with the thought that she would never spend another night under Aunt Edie’s safe and kindly roof. George was just coming out of his room, ready for work.
‘I’ll be married by the time you see me again, George,’ she told him.
‘Good heavens! That’s sudden,’ he said as she dashed down the stairs. She heard his ‘Good luck!’ as she shot through the door.
She stopped, after closing it. ‘If we go now, we’ll be over an hour too early for the shops!’
‘We could misuse half a gallon of petrol to go out for a drive, and consummate the marriage,’ he said.
‘Get lost. We’ll go and have a cup of tea in the British Restaurant,’ she said.
‘It’s not as good as my suggestion.’
‘It’s the only one on offer,’ she assured him. She’d held out this far, and she could hold out a bit longer. Their wedding night was going to be a proper wedding night, something Charles Elsworth would remember to his dying day.
There was no music, no choir, and the flowers in the church were what were left after yesterday’s Mass. The bride carried a small bouquet and wore a simple blue costume, which brought out the startling blue of her eyes, and which she intended to wear for years afterwards, or until she got too fat from having too many babies. The brief ceremony was performed by the priest of St Vincent’s before Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot, Leonard, and Marjorie, who had broken her vow never to set foot in a Catholic Church just for this occasion. The pestilential younger brothers of both bride and groom were also present, and behaving themselves pretty well, for younger brothers.
They walked the short distance back to Park Street after the wedding, and opened the door to the aroma of two roast chickens sizzling in the Rayburn, courtesy of Uncle Alf, who had wrung their necks that morning – rather reluctantly, as they had been good layers. The substantial dinner was followed by an unusual wedding cake, hastily made from eggs from the smallholding at Dunswell, the last of Marjorie and Dot’s sugar and cocoa hoards, and butter traded for Dot’s eggs.
While the older women were doing the washing up and the men were arguing about the progress of the war, Marie and Alfie sneaked out of the house together and walked to Northern Cemetery. Marie pulled three flowers from her bouquet, and then laid it on her parents’ grave. ‘Don’t worry about me and Chas, Mam,’ the young Mrs Elsworth prayed. ‘I can manage him all right. And I’ll see Alfie all right, and our Pam, if needs be.’
‘Don’t worry about me, either,’ Alfie said. ‘I’m all right with Auntie Dot and Uncle Alf.’
Alfie laid the other three flowers on Jenny’s grave and then, leaving the dead to the peaceful twilight, they walked out of the cemetery, hand in hand.
As soon as Uncle Alf and Auntie Dot had left with Alfie, and the three superfluous Elsworths had gone for the bus to Hedon to spend the night there, Marie and Chas took up where they’d left off before that devastating air raid, with the addition, this time, of silk underwear, lacy suspenders and sheer nylon stockings. When he had manfully transformed her into Mrs Elsworth in fact as well as in name, Marie laughed up at him, her triumph complete.
‘I never thought we’d get together again,’ she said. ‘You never came to see me for two full days. I thought you’d gone for good.’
‘Don’t think I didn’t try to be gone for good, either,’ he grinned. ‘But seeing it was hopeless I just had to bind my wounds, ready for the next battle.’
‘Does it have to be a battle?’
‘Only as long as you make it one.’
‘Truce, then?’
He wavered, and gave her a suspicious look out of the corner of his eye, his brows drawn together and lips compressed and turned up in a half-smile. ‘How long will it last?’ he demanded.
‘For the rest of our lives, I hope. Unless you—’
He pressed his forefinger against her lips. ‘If you’re going to say what I think you’re going to say – unless nothing!’
She looked at him and laughed.
‘You bloody were, weren’t you?’
‘My lips are sealed,’ she said.
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